pointless treasures

 I saw this heart shaped stone last week while walking away from the beach...

My hands were full.  I had so darn much to carry, but I put a few things down and picked up the rock.  I showed it to someone, she smiled.

A smile producing stone must be held onto.

I kept it in the palm of my hand and grabbed my bags, chair, other things and on I went, following behind another friend who pulled a gosh darn wagon full of beach things up the long, winding, steep incline. 

I placed it on my kitchen counter.   Left it there.  Why?   I don't know.

I don't know why I do a lot of things.

Yesterday I resisted the irresistible.  

Pots and pans on sale, 4th of July sale, now that's something hard to walk away from, but I did.

Instead of pot shopping I ran away to the mountains for 24 little hours.

I kinda almost sorta want to punish myself for leaving my pre-moving chores undone for one more day.  

Bad girl.

  I should be and could be frustrated with myself and I am, but yet I'm not.  

I'm not.  

I'm frustrated but not with myself.

I'm frustrated by life and it's magnetism...

I'm frustrated by beauty and by water, 

 luck, change, altitude, dogs that bite, passing cars,

by temperature, paper, hoarseness, love and other awful things.  Frustrated by how much more I miss my children once they come home.  Frustrated by time and how slowly it blows by

and other amazing things.

If there were no heart shaped stones to pick up and admire, I'd be more efficient and always accomplish everything. 

Maybe.

Life could stand to be a heck of a lot less irresistible...

727

seventwentyseven

Tuesday nearly 7:30 pm feels benign...

Me, I'm a lioness in a cage.

Bond - Mom Bond...

I've folded things, made a call or two.  

What else?

I cooked, served, cleaned up three meals, countless snacks.

Got the mail, but yea, I didn't open it so it doesn't count.

I put my hair up in a bun on top of my head, that can be work.  And I am wearing attractive underwear.

OH and I took the dogs to the Vet which is highly stressful.

The bigger one was not kind.   He was semi evil even and I'm grateful that the Vet Tech was likely a lesbian for she took pity on me and let the nip he gave her pass without incident.   Not that theres anything wrong with it.   (pssst Lesbian not the nip)

I feel at times like a day goes by and I waste it with my not so noticeable chores.

Then evening comes and my kids are outside on this little street, playing wildly, happily laughing with boys and girls of all ages and heights.   Kids today seem taller.

I take in the trash can, water my neighbors tomatoes, try to look and then of course feel useful.

I hear that my son is tied up in a garage down the block and so I look in to make sure that he's comfortable in his confinement.  He smiles.   No rope round his neck and we're all good in the hood, literally.

I go inside the house, feel the quietness of the kitchen.   Strawberries in a bowl.  Paper cut into strands on the table.  Scissors haphazardly splayed open, waiting for anyone to brush by, slice a gut or two, maybe not.

Restless and fitful.  

Orange-y-ness at the rear of the place alerts me to our sun setting.  Open all the curtains, pull up blinds of any kind, windows too.   I watch as it goes down for the day and suddenly whatever I did is enough and then some.

I'm more then Mom.

Basking in the glow.

I curse at the dog.  Push my pointed finger to his snout as he lays weary and sad, post vaccination, depleted from the pet clinic hype of our day; I say, "I love you, but don't you bite ladies anymore ever Shi_head" and I karate chop the air.    

How you like me now?!!!!

Yea.

I thought so.

let there be lights...

I'd never liked them  much.
They served a purpose and I knew that the person who'd handed them down to me had spent a lot of money on them.   She was notorious for her good taste.  So... I kept them for years, used them, changed the shades on them even to try and make them into something that seemed to be closer to my own, but still, they were not mine, never what I wanted or chose.

At a garage sale the other morning, I did something that seemed very small, but looking back now at the empty nightstand, I see that it was rather monumental.   I left my 9 year old son in charge of the bustling sale briefly.  I literally bolted up the stairs in our house and with total spontaneity I grabbed the lamps from beside my bed.  I sold the pair, the three hundred dollar set of lighting fixtures, to some chap who spoke no English what-so-ever for ten bucks and I left the bulbs in.   Why not let there be light?

I missed them for about 2 seconds last night, when I wanted to fold a heap of wash fresh from the dryer on my empty bed and secretly catch up on the dreaded New Jersey Housewives show, the one I'm embarrassed to admit I watch on occasion.   Two things I love to do; fold warm laundry and watch bad gossip about deranged women from the state where I grew up, turned into three things I love... 

1) fold warm laundry
2) watch bad TV
3) spend my evening basking in the glow of candle light.

I may never replace the lamps and I realize that I may never again find myself in the situation which lead to my having little to no say in what illuminated my life....
There are other ways to let light in.

Boxes and other leaps of faith

"Risk verses reward", is what he said. 
I don't do that anymore because I might get hurt is what he meant.

We're talking about box jumps.  We're talking about standing still, feet flat on the ground and leaping upward, landing on a platform, then jumping or stepping back down quickly and doing it again and again, then again and again.  It's not hard, but it is.  It's scary and it's exhilarating, challenging, but it's also maybe a little silly.   I always feel as though I might get hurt and this past time I did, but not that badly.  In fact I felt it happening, I felt myself become injured and I pretended that it didn't bother me one bit.   I kept going, knowing that I was less capable, less strong, more fragile, but I leapt anyhow.   I compensated for what happened to me for the rest of the day and then at night, I put ice on the blue streak across my knee for a bit, until the ice became more inconvenient then the pain itself.  Little steams of water trickled down my leg from the melting sac of ice and the case over the pillow upon which I'd rested became slightly damp and so those things mattered more then the bruising skin, swelling, tender muscle that is in fact a part of me, my own flesh and blood.

What is wrong with this picture?  
Wait a minute - 
Whats wrong with this person?

I don't often heed the common sensical.
I don't learn easily about risk and reward.
Not when it comes to myself.  

I'll look both ways five times.  I'll listen with my good ear for the distant murmur of a possible engine running 1/2 mile away.  I might as well go ahead and do some sort of scientific finger lick, put my pointer up into the air to see if theres any perceptible shift in the wind, indicating a vehicle might be coming any time soonish, before I let my children cross the street between us and the lake up in the sleepy mountains where we spend some of our time.   The care I take allowing others to cross the road, the amount of times I wash berries before we consume them, the sunscreen I apply, the flea deterrent on the dogs, the hospital corners of our beds, organic this, gluten free that - I am so careful.  I am so concerned.  I am so preventative with others and with things I cannot actually control, and yet...

I will always, always throw my heart and sometimes my body out there, time and time again, ignoring risk vs reward.   I don't stop when it begins to hurt.  I pretend that it doesn't even.  I carry on.   And in all this carrying on, I make sure that if the ice on my injury should start to cause some kind of mess, well then, the mess gets attended to while the injury goes - what?  Goes ignored, untreated, unnoticed?    No.    The injury just stays and becomes part of me and moves forward with me to the next box I jump and the one after that and then the next and the next and the next.

Sometimes it takes almost 50 years to understand what you were born knowing.

Risk verses reward

Self preservation

Love yourself... at least as much as you love others and heal before you move on to the next box, heal before you go ahead and leap some more.  
Take not the issues of your past forward.
Be a better box for others to jump.

 Be the ONE you love...

  

Piece of cake

Piece of cake...

Icing on top...

Eating it too?

Am I?

At Disneyland today I actually yawned.  I did.  Sacrilege - don't you think?   It is.  It's not right.  
H A P P I E S T place on earth.  All that time and effort put into something to make it more then amazing and I yawned.  
I'd been there before.   But you know I've been everywhere before, or so it feels.

So what is it?  What does it take?    How great does something have to be to keep my attention?  Seriously, what cake is it which will make me want to eat the whole darn piece, cherry on top and all?   Where is the icing on this fabulous cake which I won't be able to resist?

I realize that what I crave isn't dessert; I want the Whole Enchilada.   I want it all.  I don't selfishly want to just have the sweet stuff.  I want the meal, the protein, the starchy carbs (just a little) and all those good for you vegetables.  I want gravy, I need salt and pepper and I'll do the dishes.   I want the meal, the combo.  I want the life, the grocery list, the cart to push.  I want to crack the eggs, measure up the flour,  pour on the sugar.   I want the work.  I want.  I do.   I don't consider having my cake enough. 


I used to think "lonely" was an embarrassing word.   I thought it meant that no one cared for you, but thats not always the case.    I can be in a room full of people who I know and love and still be lonely.  I can live a cake filled life and not be full.  I want to be in the bakery with the pastry chef who makes me notice how worthwhile the thousand empty calories are and I need them to want the flipping cake as well.

I want to have my cake...and to share it too.

unrivaled siblings

"You hugged me really hard", my older brother said as he smiled and so I hugged him harder and smiled back while we danced to Just The Way You Look Tonight.

The hardest hug could not ever convey the love I feel, nor can words... and so perhaps this is why I've struggled for days, wanting to write about it, but unable to.  

I'm confounded at times by the love I feel for my siblings.

Having just been together, all five of us, for several days straight, I am more aware then I've been in a long while, about the depth of my feelings for them.

What is most remarkable is this - it doesn't matter whether these people are attractive or funny, though they are.

It's not about what they can do for me, though they do so much.

It's not how they treat me, though I feel loved and adored by them.

It's not what they do, who they are, what they say...

It is something deeper

roots under a tree

sand beneath the sea

water inside a cloud

barely detectable portions of larger things

These people I've loved my whole life, can burp, fart, laugh, fail, succeed, fall apart, blossom and it doesn't matter at all.   Nothing, no state of being alters my love for them.  

I don't know if it's this way in all families.   I do know this - it should be.

It's nature.

It's the most natural thing and anything that goes against nature is discord and though one can survive in such circumstance, I'm going so far as to say that I truly believe one will not entirely thrive while not syncing with nature and it's course.

Brotherhood, sisterhood 

Even when I'm unaware, not present to the this easily forgotten, but base relationship in my life, this love I have inside of me for my sisters and brothers is forever part of everything I do.

Like a steering wheel in a car, they guide me through life, subconsciously at times and more blatantly at others.

They are my airbag

my sleeping bag

my mirror

my escape hatch

my memory

my confessional

my match stick

my crutch

my starting line

my finish line

my to go box

my swiss army knife

They are Winnie the Pooh, Planet of the Apes, Wide World of Sports, Sonny &Cher, Saturday Night Live.

They are most of my firsts and much of my middle and I rest happily in the certainty that they'll be there in my lasts.

My forevers

...my barely detectable portions

A bird in the hand...

Answers.

I am always seeking them.

Which means of course that I've usually got a question in need of answering, often more then just one.

Do you believe in signs?

I do.

Once I walked through a thousand acre park with my older dog and my first child.   I wore my husbands coat and inside of me I carried a child or maybe just the dream of one.

I saw a crow's feather lying randomly on the green grass and I took it as a lucky sign, being so attracted to crows, ravens and black birds of any kind.

Then I saw another and another and another.  A few steps more and I saw the bird, still full of sleek black feathers, pristine and perfect, dead on the ground, eyes open, dark and lifeless.

Everything changed within the hour.   My little dream, like the crow was mysteriously present and not present at the same time.

My belief in signs solidified.

I never fail to miss a hawk circling above and I am forever counting crows.  Once a bald eagle soared just a few feet over me while I floated in the center of a lake.   The other day a Mallard rested bravely in the crowded  parking lot of my daughter's school utterly oblivious to every mother inching her SUV toward the curb filled with waiting, noisy, unpredictable children.

I had my question in need of answering, while a sweet, persistent chirp resonated through the house and at last I acknowledged the sound and sought the source.   A sparrow, small and common, significant and rare perched on the window sill on the wrong side of the glass.

My sign. 

An hour later I had the bird in my hand, after he'd nearly committed suicide dare deviling  his way out of this house.  In time he landed on the carpet, stunned and concussed, I caught him reluctantly, with trepidation, intimidated about holding all 2 ounces of him in my hand.   Once I did though, it became instantly addictive.  It is true what they say, a bird in the hand is worth double... 

He escaped me and flew deeper into the house rather then head toward any of the purposely open doors and unscreened windows.  Again I trapped and caught him and this time, I spoke sweetly to him with all the love I had inside  me, channeling everything I had to give into something so small and minuscule but who's heartbeat I could feel from my fingers to my very core.

I took him to the backyard and I put him gingerly onto the grass, but he seemed too vulnerable there.   This time I picked him up effortlessly, third time's a charm for sure and I placed him in a bush and then he moved up to a nearby tree.   He hesitated long enough for me to place all my hopes and unanswered questions onto the tips of his wings and eventually he flew away and with him, all the things I held onto released, like him, free to find the answers or not.   It's all in the wind.

I don't know if I believe, believe, believe in signs, but I believe in the magnetism of being alive and present, filled with hope despite the odds and harsh realities of our world.   With that openness comes the attraction of life and events, adventure and distraction and often excitement, if you are willing to become excited about possibilities in any form.

And so I move gratefully into the future moment by moment, with a wing and a prayer, if not seeking simply answers then perhaps just the continuation of questions and a reason to look for signs.